An ontological approach to Unified Contract Management

Easy access of Internet has revolutionized the concept of electronic commerce. As the bulk of business transactions shifts to electronic media, we have business collaborations being negotiated between previously unknown partners. Thus a Contract is the key to a successful business relationship. We foresee a need for a unified contract management in order to achieve coherent business operations. Interoperability and integration of business processes with the 'agreed upon' business, economic and legal terms and conditions as stated in a Contract is one of our primary goals. We aim at building conceptual models to capture the semantics of a Contract. An ontological approach enable us to analyze the same contract from different perspectives - the legal and social behavioral centric, the business and process centric, as well as the document centric 'contract document' view. This results in a basis for a Unified Contract Management framework supporting all the phases of a Contract life cycle including conception, formation, negotiation, monitoring and fulfillment.